Hallowed 'Verse Director's Cut
by ObsidianJade
Summary: The author's cutting room floor, following the completion of All Hallowed. Deleted and unused scenes and other miscellany. Ch7 - Cabbie's perspective through chapters 7/8 of All Hallowed. *Please note chapter warnings!*
1. Memory

This is set about a month after Nick's death. Maru copes with Blade not-coping.

 **WARNINGS** : Angst, grief, depression, survivor's guilt, pain, catharsis, body modification (akin to scarification, so if this is problematic for you, please feel free to skip!), mentions of alcohol abuse, generally inadvisable life decisions.

The core-engraving idea featured in this chapter is taken from a couple of Transformers fics that I read, several years ago, in which one of the Autobots has the names of his fellows who were lost in war engraved into the interior parts of his armor and/or his spark casing. Also, Optimus explaining the carvings on his helmet to curious humans.

As I can't recall the names or authors of these fanfictions, my apologies to the authors for having poached their ideas. If anyone can point me in the direction of the stories in question, I would be quite grateful!

While this was originally intended to be part of the main body of All Hallowed, it was really just too depressing to fit anywhere outside of chapters 7-8, and I was not going to pull attention away from Cabbie for _more_ of Blade's old angst.

DISCLAIMER: Author makes no claim to ownership of Disney's Planes and no profit from this work.

* * *

 **MEMORY**

"Are you sure about this?"

Chrysler knew Blade still had to be in pain. He'd only laid off the high-grade two days ago, guaranteed his head hadn't stopped hurting yet.

Pits knew Maru's hadn't. But if he drank enough, sometimes he could quiet his mind to the point that he _almost_ stopped seeing that silent, half-transparent image of Nick out of the corner of his eye.

Blade's eyes, still achingly bloodshot and terrifyingly blank, turned slowly, narrowing into a dull glare as they focused on Maru.

He folded his tines and stared back, unimpressed. "Stop trying to intimidate me, you know it doesn't work. If I screw this up, it's probably going to kill you, so I need you to use words here."

"Yes."

Blade's voice was, if possible, even more terrifying than his eyes. A low rasp, dulled and roughened from days of silent drinking and nights of memories.

Maru knew it would be a long time before Blade stopped screaming in his sleep - and longer still before those screams stopped echoing in his waking mind.

"More than one word," Maru prodded, but he turned and lifted his toolkit onto the table anyway, flicking the lamp on and trying not to flinch too violently as the light hit his eyes. Chrysler above, that hurt.

"Yes, Maru, I want..." Blade stopped to cough, a violent, ugly sound that Maru resolutely did not turn around for, " - want you to do this," Blade finished, shifting on his tires and spitting whatever he'd hacked up off to one side.

Charming.

"You sound like death," Maru grumbled, fishing for his engraving tool, and winced at his own choice of words. His rear bumper was still to Blade, but he could feel the chopper's glare all the same.

His transparent guilty conscience was glowering at him as well. He wasn't sure if it was better or worse than the horrified pity that was usually on its face.

"Feel like it, too."

Neither the words nor the tone specified whether Blade meant 'feel like' as 'desire' or 'current physical condition'.

Just as well. Maru was pretty sure he didn't want to know, and equally certain he knew anyway.

"Let me go on record here as saying that this is a _very bad idea."_

"Most of mine seem to be," Blade shot back, a few of the rough edges of his voice sanded down from the talking or the coughing or both. "So let me go on record as saying I _don't slagging care."_

Maru turned back to face him at that, engraving tool held loosely in one fork, and fixed Blade with the expression that comment deserved; an undisguised mingling of anger, hurt, and disappointment.

Weirdly, his guilty conscience was shooting Blade the same look.

Blade's head probably still hurt like someone was hammering knives into his brain, and he'd never been the most emotionally perceptive of vehicles, but he caught on to Maru's feelings quick enough. "I mean I don't care that it's a bad idea, Maru. I need this, need to have _something_ to... to keep him with me."

The omnipresent figment of Maru's imagination began mouthing soundless profanities at that, a flowing and creative combination of English and Spanish that he could read in the shapes of the snarling, transparent lips, and a few of them were creative enough that it was only the palpable weight of anguish still clouding the room that kept Maru from laughing out loud.

Muttering a few choice phrases of his own instead, Maru hefted the engraving tool in his tine and rolled forward.

* * *

Core engravings were, overall, an _incredibly stupid_ thing to do. The core casings were sturdy, yeah, they had to be, but that didn't mean that carving into the metal was smart, or easy.

Or painless.

Usually, in the event that someone was stupid enough to want to get a core engraving done, they went to a specialty clinic connected to a hospital and enjoyed the benefits of anesthesia while a trained and licensed professional carved bits out of the metal protecting their core with specialized equipment.

Blade was on the thirty-seventh hour of a hangover and wide awake in a hotel hanger while a jack-of-all-trades former set medic bit his tongue bloody with the stress of trying not to let his all-purpose engraver cut too deeply into Blade's core.

Maru could hear the chopper's teeth grinding even through the twisted shop rags Blade had finally allowed Maru to set between his teeth twenty minutes ago, biting down on the cloth against what were undoubtedly screams of pain trying to escape him.

Every now and again, a thin whimper would slip through the makeshift gag, and each time, Maru had leaned back to look Blade in the eye, reminding him that they could stop, he didn't have to do this, didn't have to go through with this.

Each time, those bloodshot blue eyes would narrow in response, and Maru would silently return to work, the diamond tip of his engraver slowly forcing its way through the dense metal of Blade's core casing, tracing the loops of Nick's signature into Blade's very being.

In the corner of the room, the silent, transparent echo of his guilt wept.

He was only half finished.

* * *

Blade was shaking by the time it was done, and Maru's tines had gone numb in the concrete hanger's chill.

He'd lost track of the hours, somewhere, by the time he finally sat back on his tires and delicately traced a damp cloth over the carved letters. Blade, who hadn't so much as twitched a rotor at the harsh bite of the engraver, flinched almost violently at the gentle touch of the cloth.

Out of bitter, perverse anger, Maru stroked the cloth over the engraving again, and again, continuing the cautious, gentle movement until Blade finally stopped flinching away.

Beside them, his imagination was muttering a steady stream of words that had become audible somewhere around the first time Blade had actually screamed, while Maru had incised the long, arching curve of the 'L' in Lopez.

 _"...rotor-slap the pair of you, you're both such idiots, Blade, mi amado, you're not gonna lose me, never gonna lose me, Maru, you idiot, why are you agreeing to_ any _of this?"_

He'd asked himself that a few times already, but he knew the answer. When someone couldn't bear kindness, sometimes pain was the only way to heal them.

"Feel better now?" he asked, instead of dignifying his guilt with an answer, giving the cloth a quick, final swipe around Blade's core chamber to pick up the tiny slivers of metal.

And Blade's voice, despite the torture he'd just put himself through, was steadier than it had been in weeks when he answered.

"Yeah. Thanks, Maru."

"Don't mention it," Maru sighed, carefully fitting the access panels back in place. "And don't ever ask me to do that again, Blade, you understand?"

 _"Seconded!"_ bellowed his conscience, close enough to Maru's ears that he flinched at the sound. What had he been saying earlier, about pain healing?

Very carefully, Blade straightened up on his gear, stretching slightly, testing the undoubtedly still-throbbing pain of his core. "Not exactly an issue," he muttered, a flash of the old Blade's impertinence showing through for the first time since That Day.

Maru rolled his eyes as he packed his engraver away. Blade didn't love easy, he knew that, but the kid had fallen for Nick fast and hard, and it wasn't completely out of the question that it would happen again, even as scarred as he was now. "I'm gonna hold you to that the next time you love someone who does something stupid," he grumbled, ignoring his conscience's growl as he shook the metal shavings out of the cloth. The floor was a catastrophic mess anyway.

But when he turned around, Blade had those blue eyes pinned on him, and there was an intensity, a _life_ , behind them that he hadn't thought he'd ever see again.

"You're the only other name I'd put on my core, Maru," Blade said, his voice quiet and intent. "You're the only one who would ever deserve to be next to him."

It was an apology as much as an expression of gratitude, Maru knew that. And maybe even a bit more. Letting a rueful grin creep across his face, he rolled forward to pat the helicopter lightly in front of his hoist hatch. "You too, Blade," he sighed. "You, too."

The words might never come, and, thank Chrysler, neither would the passion that Nick and Blade had shared, but the emotion was there.

That, Maru was sure of.

* * *

[END]

* * *

For some reason (author transference, perhaps?) Maru is asexual in my headcanon, and quite deeply in love with Blade. Blade, being demisexual in my hc and his only romantic interest having been/being Nick, reciprocates. So they roll along being snarkily awesome platonic life partners until Nick comes back and they form their awesome platonic/romantic/snarktastic love triangle.


	2. Steady As The Beating Drum

(Set in the three-day gap within Chapter Ten of All Hallowed, while Blade is recovering from his crash and the remainder of the team is still combating the fire.)

* * *

STEADY AS THE BEATING DRUM

Windlifter was humming something, soft and low but the sound carrying nonetheless, as he rolled towards the main hanger. Even in the muddled light - the grey of the smokey predawn and the dull yellow of the sodium lamps - Blade could see the ash and soot dulling his Lieutenant's paint, and grimaced. His empty rotor hub ached.

Behind him, within his hanger, Nick was still asleep, murmuring softly in his dreams. Blade had left the door open a few inches after rolling out onto his helipad, unable to sleep from the dull physical ache of his healing injuries and the persistent mental itch of irritation at his grounded state. His place was in the air with his team, dammit, not on the concrete with his nose stuck to a barely-functional radio!

As though sensing Blade's agitation - which would not be the strangest thing Windlifter had ever managed - Windlifter paused, turning just enough to regard Blade from the corner of one eye. Oddly, he didn't stop humming; if anything, the soft sound became louder, and the vague familiarity of the tune itched in Blade's head the same way his aggravation did.

With almost any other vehicle, Blade's steady stare would have been enough to break them into quivering nerves, but Windlifter held his ground, not shifting in the slightest, the faint strains of his humming drifting on the air to Blade, who finally heaved a sigh and rolled down the hill from his hanger.

 _"What,"_ he snapped, as soon as he'd gotten within a few body-lengths of the big Sikorsky. Infuriatingly, Windlifter hummed another few measures of the song before finally replying.

"You are out of balance," came the calm response.

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Blade growled back, putting perhaps more sarcasm in the words than was strictly necessary. He would have flicked his rotors for emphasis, but... well, that was the root of his problem, wasn't it?

Windlifter, rather than dignifying his petulance with a reply, closed his eyes and began humming his song again, slightly louder than before, and Blade resisted the urge to bite him in the nose. He hadn't had nearly enough coffee yet to deal with Windlifter's esoteric nonsense.

But the thought of coffee lead to the thought of the Main Hanger, which lead to thoughts of movie nights, which lead -

"You old fraud!" Blade snorted, as precisely why the song sounded familiar suddenly occurred to him. "That's from _Pocahontas!_ "

"I'm aware," Windlifter answered, not batting an eye at the 'fraud' comment. It wasn't true anyway, which Blade would readily admit. _After_ he'd had his coffee.

"I cannot remember the last English stanza," Windlifter continued, "and so the song is stuck in my head. I was hoping to recall the lyrics and make it less... persistent."

That was... alarmingly logical, actually. Frowning a little, Blade racked his memory, following the recollection of the music. Nick could probably recite the entire song from memory, but Blade was loathe to wake him in order to discuss a Disney movie - especially when Nick had been the one to force him to join the rest of the team in watching it anyway. Blade certainly didn't want to admit he'd enjoyed that inaccurate, romanticized drivel.

"Something to do with spirits and balance," he answered finally, and Windlifter's humming rose half an octave in surprised approval.

Blade's vague recollection was evidently enough to trigger his Lieutenant's memory, though, because, to Blade's surprise, he sang the verse aloud. His voice, soft and deep, make the lyrics echo like a prayer.

 _"Oh Great Spirit, hear our song,_  
 _Help us keep the ancient ways,_  
 _Keep the sacred fire strong_ ,  
 _Live in balance all our days."_

The sound resonated through him, frame-deep, and Blade exhaled sharply, just as the sun finally rose above the eastern crest of the valley, its light refracting scarlet and gold through the smoke. The brilliance of it seemed to burst over both of them, and for a split second, Windlifter all but glowed in the light.

Then Blade took another breath, and his Lieutenant was gazing back at him, ash-streaked and desperately in need of waxing, softly and absently humming music from some Disney fallacy of history.

But the persistent itch of aggravation had dulled, Blade realized, and the tension it had brought with it had ebbed away, taking most of the aches in his body with it.

"Balance, huh?" he asked, wryly.

Windlifter, infuriatingly, only hummed in response.

[END CHAPTER]

* * *

 _Steady As The Beating Drum_ somehow managed to get itself lodged quite solidly in my head, despite my not having watched _Pocahontas_ in... 5-10 years? - and as Windlifter was in residence at the time, it earwormed him as well. In this case, both my and Windlifter's earworm were courtesy of something called the _Zeigarnik Effect_ , in which the brain recognizes an unfinished mental process (such as being unable to follow the lyrics of a song all the way through) and basically puts the song on repeat in an attempt to recall the entire thing. An easy fix is to listen to the entire song, although other 'cures' for being earwormed include getting fully absorbed in some other task and, apparently, chewing gum.

(My preference is watching song vids on YouTube, particularly in other languages. Love the Mandarin Chinese version of _Drum!_ )


	3. Haunted

A/N: You guys can blame AmbulanceRobots and her love of Ryker for this one. (Which isn't to say I don't love the big brute as well, although nothin' and nobody is moving Windlifter and Doc Hudson out of the top spots. Even you, Nick, so stop pouting. You knew that coming in.)

But, essentially Ryker's thoughts following the first half of Ch12 of _All Hallowed._

 _The Art of Planes_ book has proven a very helpful resource in writing these stories; among other things, it provides the name of Ryker's assistant, which is Kurtz.

* * *

 **HAUNTED**

There were some people, he had learned, that you could never get away from.

Sometimes they were just memories, chasing you through your lifetime.

Others were a slightly more physical presence, but equally difficult to escape.

Nicholas Ryker had met a number of these people, both the remembered and the present, throughout his life, and gave them their due when they came calling, in whatever form that may have been.

Dusty Crophopper, for better or worse, had become one of the latter.

Ryker's superiors had called his posting at the finish line of the Wings Around the Globe Rally a 'respite', following the conclusion of a three-week long investigation into a multiple-fatality crash in Boston.

Being assigned to an airport crowded with several thousand screaming, overwrought vehicles, waiting for one of the so-called 'professional' racers to end the race in a permanent fashion, was not what he deemed pleasurable, or relaxing - even if the ending of the race had been rather enjoyable to witness.

Although he had been only passingly familiar with the planes participating in the rally, Ripslinger was difficult to avoid, even for airport service personnel, and did not make efforts to endear himself to anyone.

Crophopper, on the other tire, he wouldn't have been able to pick out of a lineup if his assistant Kurtz hadn't been following the plane's meteoric rise quite so damned enthusiastically. It was entirely against TMST policy for agents to wear or carry any form of endorsement on their person, but that regulation didn't extend to off-hours television viewing, Internet browsing, or coffee mug purchases. (Ryker would be slagged before he'd admit aloud that the propeller mug was actually rather amusing.)

But it had made for a few extremely awkward minutes when they had been routed from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to a one-runway town lost somewhere amidst the cornfields of Minnesota's southwest, only to realize that said town was the home of one Dusty Crophopper.

The awkwardness was overcome with the professionalism that only many years practice could grant, although it resurged when Crophopper himself had quietly interrupted to take the blame for the fire, then again, viciously, when the evidence of gross negligence left Ryker no choice but to shut down the airport.

He was not kind in doing so, which he refused to regret. Firefighting was not a kind profession, and while he respected the ancient engine, it would have been far crueler to offer kind words and a blind eye only to let a greater accident, and perhaps loss of life, happen. It had been only incomprehensible luck that had spared both the airport and the lives of its citizens from far greater harm this time around. Such fortune would not be repeated.

When he found himself routed to a double incident at a National Park in California only a few weeks later, he had stared at the assignment for several long minutes before calling his office to double-check the information. Twice.

Because certainly it went against any odds for him to be encountering Dusty Crophopper again, particularly this soon and halfway across the country?

The odds, he discovered, were ones not even Las Vegas would have taken. Crophopper was indeed at the Air Attack Base, though still unconscious and under the care of their aggressively effective mechanic.

(And if the Chief of the fire crew had looked unsettlingly like someone distantly remembered from one dreamlike day in Ryker's childhood, he'd ignored that just as fiercely as the thread of guilt that tried to gnaw into his thoughts when he saw Crophopper in that mechanic's bay. One life did not measure against two, against ten, against a hundred. No matter how much influence he might have had in driving that life to the point it hung at now.)

But another week and a half found him making his way back through the cornfields of southwestern Minnesota, to encounter both Crophopper and the hauntingly familiar Fire Chief again - thankfully, on more agreeable terms this time.

Foolishly, he thought that might have been the end of it. And it was, for three nearly-uneventful months.

Until he was called back to California, and found himself driving along the valley roads of Piston Peak National Park again, Kurtz dawdling slightly behind him to take in the view, ashy though it may have been. And Crophopper, present once more, had sounded nearly as surprised to see Ryker as Ryker was to see him.

The Fire Chief greeted him with wry politeness, the nagging familiarity sharp enough to bite, now, with that sardonic humor in his tone.

And then he'd glanced past the Chief - whose gleaming paint and freshly restored bodywork were not enough to distract from the fact his main rotor hub sat empty, a mute testimony to his crash - to the helicopter beside him, and every thought but one had fled his mind.

 _Impossible._

Because Nicholas Lopez had, for three decades, been nothing more than a childhood memory, one that lingered in the corners of Ryker's life, serving as a quiet source of driving determination.

He remembered crying after his father had told him the new of Lopez's death. In the years since, he'd often wondered if better regulation and stricter safety precautions could have saved Lopez's life.

Those questions were, in large part, why he was such an unforgiving investigator. No child should ever have to learn that someone they loved had been lost in a preventable accident.

The shock only intensified when Nick, his smile undimmed and unchanged from those hazy memories of decades ago, offered his explanation. And the Sikorsky offered his explanation, which...

Kurtz didn't bat an eye at the entire thing, which was a mystery for another day. One when he wasn't attempting to juggle words into an explanation that wouldn't get him put on psychiatric leave.

Because turning in a report claiming the former ghost of his childhood idol had developed a communications system based on the teleportation abilities of ghosts was just not, no pun intended, going to fly.

Beside him, Kurtz discreetly cleared his throat and pushed a can of coffee across the desk. A few swallows of the stuff - it was prepared the way he'd gotten used to on endless duty shifts, which was to say, easily mistaken for hot tar - managed to shift his brain back into gear.

"...employing a relay-style system of communication between the aircraft of the team to ensure orders were effectively communicated between team members," he muttered to himself, nudging the coffee out of the way of his computer's microphone. There was the sound of crinkling paper as the cup moved, and he glanced down, confused.

The bold title on the papers - _Identity Reclamation - Post Core Rebuild_ \- took a moment to process, but when it did, he allowed himself a small smile, and, minimizing the report, opened his email program instead. Nick Lopez had done him a great favor those decades ago, in becoming both a friend and, however unknowingly, a guiding force for the young child he'd cheerfully welcomed.

It was nice to finally have a chance to return it.


	4. Lullaby

Original Notes: Although I'm not hugely happy with this piece, it's not improving by being left to gather metaphorical dust in my hard drive. The bones of it are right, and there are not enough Nick+Maru snuggles in my Hallowed 'verse so this is NECESSARY, but it's still not quite what I wanted it to be.

(A comment discussion on AO3 made me realize what dissatisfied me was the dissonance between Maru's narration and my vocabulary, but that the dissonant tone suited the work. It's still not my favorite, but I've warmed up to it a little.)

* * *

Chapter 6: Lullaby

It was a quiet day.

Almost eerily quiet, really; Maru couldn't remember the last time he'd been alone on the base, even previous mid-Januaries, when the majority of the team had dispersed to various corners of the country. Patch and the Smokejumpers were all at their respective homes, Dipper was spending time with family in Washington state, and Cabbie, with Wally in attendance as always, was visiting a few of his surviving wingmates at the retirement yards in Tucson. Windlifter was ostensibly helping Liz with something down at the Lodge, although exactly what they were trying to work on halfway through January, Maru couldn't begin to guess.

And the other permanently-permanent residents of the base, Blade and Nick, had left before Maru had woken up that morning, destined for an annual meeting with the chiefs of several of the surrounding fire companies.

To both take advantage of the quiet and distract himself from it, Maru was taking the opportunity to do a thorough inventory of his workshop. There was a particular stack of heavy travel crates stuffed into the furthest-back corner of his quarters, under a decade and a half of dust, that he'd been hauling around since L.A.. At this point, he couldn't honestly remember what was in half of them - stuff from the CHoPs set, he remembered; picture albums, newspaper and magazine clippings, a set of Blade and Nick's old decals that he'd swiped, a couple things of Nick's that Blade hadn't had the will to pack up after the accident, but that didn't account for more than two of the five containers. Some of their contents had to be his own personal stuff, but damned if he could remember what any of it actually _was_.

He'd hauled them out into the open air of the shop and dusted them off before breakfast, mostly so that he didn't get distracted creating another wish-list of necessities they might actually be able to afford this year and put off investigating them _again_. The stuff in them clearly wasn't necessary if he'd gone this long without it, so it was definitely lower priority than meticulously cross-checking his supplies of hydraulic line for the third time. Right?

Wise enough to be aware of his own avoidance mechanisms, he'd placed the containers in the most inconvenient positions possible in the middle of the repair bay, which left him the choice of either moving them back where they'd been or actually opening them up and dealing with them properly if he wanted to stop backing into them every five minutes.

"Oh," he muttered in surprise, when popping open the first of the containers revealed a distinctively shaped hardside case. "So _that's_ where that went..."

With the faint, vague sense of reverence reserved for objects steeped in nostalgia, he reached into the container and extracted the case, setting it carefully on the cement before popping the latches. The lid tipped back easily, the hinges not protesting in the least despite decades of immobility, and the light spilled over the case's contents for the first time in longer than Maru cared to remember.

Amazingly, it was still in pristine condition; sleek, glossy, and untouched by the ravages of time. The wood was smooth and unwarped, varnish still bright and clear, and the brushed metal of the pegs and posts still threw back a soft gleam in the light, not a speck of rust or corrosion in sight.

The guitar had been a gift from Nick, decades ago, when Maru's old Fender had finally cracked around the neck bolts. It had taken him months to master playing this particular model, but now, as he restrung it and tried a few, cautious strums, he found he hadn't lost the skill.

"I didn't realize you still had it."

Over the last few decades, Maru had managed to pretty much eliminate his startle reflex - it was a side-effect of working alongside a ten-ton ninja Skycrane and the occasional obnoxiously omnipresent ghost. But when he'd spent more than six straight hours assuming he was entirely alone, without anyone correcting him, the unexpected voice from almost directly behind him managed to garner a much bigger reaction than it should have. He managed not to drop the guitar, but more than a few creative expletives tumbled out instead.

"Chrysler, Nick," he sighed, once he'd finished venting. "Don't do that unless you wanna find out how useful _I'll_ be as a ghost!" Sometimes, he really regretted making those skid wheels for Nick. At least the distinctive clunks of Nick's hopping would have alerted him to the chopper's presence.

"Sorry, 'ru, I really thought you knew I was here," Nick offered, the apology half-swallowed by a yawn. "What language was that last one, anyway?"

It took Maru a second to parse the question before he realized Nick was talking about his burst of profanity from a moment earlier. He'd acquired a wide and diverse library of rudeness over the years, not all of it in English - it was one of the weirder benefits of working with a multilingual crew.

"Vietnamese for 'tractor-fragger'," he answered, after backtracking through exactly what he'd said.

"Who -" Nick began, but his higher brain functions caught up with him before he could finish the question. "Cabbie?"

"Natch." The big plane had a surprisingly good head for languages; he still spoke fluent French that he'd picked up during the Indochina Wars, along with a fair helping of Vietnamese and Korean. Most of it wasn't even that rude - once, Cabbie and Maru had stopped off at a Korean restaurant on their way back from a supply run, and Cabbie had astounded Maru and delighted their waitress by exchanging pleasantries and placing their order in Korean without missing a beat.

Nick yawned again, and Maru took a moment to glance him over. There were damn few reasons why Nick wouldn't have gone along with Blade this morning, and the pinched expression around his mouth and the tight exhaustion at the corners of his eyes was enough to clue Maru in.

He'd seen those same signs on Blade, day after day, after nights of haunted dreams that often-as-not had woken them both up to the echos of Blade's screams.

Adjusting his grip on the guitar a little, Maru picked out a quick, careful scale. "July or November?" he asked, keeping his tone carefully bland. There weren't many things that gave Nick nightmares; his own crash, if it had ever bothered him, had stopped being an issue years ago. _Blade's_ crashes, though...

Nick's eyes narrowed slightly, but when Maru began picking out the bones of the CHoPs theme - not an easy task, on an acoustic guitar - he relented with a sigh.

"Both," Nick admitted, sagging a little lower on his gear, his nose brushing Maru's flank. "And then some."

Maru leaned back into the slight pressure against his side without comment, absently picking out melodies as his tines remembered the feel of the strings. Soon, though, a different memory drifted back to him - an old memory, years before the Smokejumpers or even Dipper - the night they'd lost Richter. A memory of sitting on the tarmac between Blade and Windlifter, listening to Cabbie, deeper in his cups that night than Maru had ever seen him, quietly singing Korean lullabies.

Those haunting, melancholy songs had clung to Maru's memory, enough so that he'd searched them out and learned the words as best he could even after Richter's picture on The Wall had begun collecting dust.

Carefully, quietly, he began picking out the simple melody of Story of the Sky, the words slipping from him with stumbling care as Nick's breathing slowed and he leaned more heavily against Maru's side.

* * *

When Blade returned from the meeting hours later, he found the pair of them leaning together, soundly asleep in the sunlight, while Maru's guitar gleamed brightly in his tines.

* * *

~ End Chapter ~

* * *

END NOTES:

In CHiPs, both Ponch and Jon are shown to own guitars, although neither one is ever actually shown _playing_ said guitars.

Maru's guitar is a Martin D25K, koa wood body and spruce top. Very pretty guitar, but I'm sure it would not hold up to decades of storage without issue in the real world, even if it was properly destrung and kept in a semi-controlled environment inside both a travel case and a storage container. However, this is a world in which vehicles are sapient beings. The guitar, therefore, is fine.

Maru's old Fender cracking around the neck bolts - 1970's Fender Stratocasters had the neck of the guitar held to the body with only three bolts (rather than the more stable four of previous eras) on a triangular plate. This design allowed for movement in the neck of the guitar, which, as you can guess, was not conducive to long lifespans for the instruments.


	5. The Price of a Smile

Author's Notes: This piece is inspired by ' _Lullaby_ ' (Ch.4) - _Cabbie and Maru had stopped off at a Korean restaurant on their way back from a supply run, and Cabbie had astounded Maru and delighted their waitress by exchanging pleasantries and placing their order in Korean without missing a beat._

For some reason, which I am alternately blaming on Wally and AmbulanceRobots depending on the day, that line stuck with me and begged for expansion. And Cabbie-the-not-so-secret-polyglot is now inescapable headcanon.

Kimchi: a family of traditional Korean dishes, made of fermented vegetables and seasonings, somewhat comparable to sauerkraut.

Baechu kimchi is made of a whole, salted Napa cabbage, stuffed with a variety of fillings (including shredded fruit, vegetables, and seasoning) and pickled. It's generally served during the fall and winter.

Natto is a traditional Japanese food made of fermented soybeans. Wikipedia notes that ' _Nattō may be an acquired taste because of its powerful smell, strong flavor, and slimy texture.'_

Credit/blame to AmbulanceRobots because all things Cabbie and many things water balloon are her fault, and AO3's Skittles the Sugar Fairy for a particular prank of Windlifter's mentioned within the story.

* * *

 **THE PRICE OF A SMILE**

It was kind of a hole in the wall, really, the sort of place that looked like it owed its continued existence to gross negligence on the part of the Health Department.

But the food was actually good, the portions were generous, and the prices were low, which, combined with close proximity to the airport and an outside dining area large enough to allow the occasional heavy plane to meander through between flights, the place stayed in business pretty easily.

Even with proximity to the airport, though, most of the customers were local regulars - a lot of airport staff and a couple of commuter fliers - so the brawny C-119 with the faded Air Force markings rolling in came as a bit of a surprise. If he noticed any of the startled gazes on him when he rolled up, though, he didn't stop bickering with the purple-and-grey forklift beside him long enough to show it.

"...lugging your aft across half the state for those supplies, I get to pick where we eat," the plane growled, the sound of it intimidating, but the forklift just snorted in response.

"Oh, please, what you're carrying doesn't even outweigh Drip, let alone Pinecone or Avalanche," the forklift grumbled as they maneuvered themselves to a table not far from the one where I was eating. The plane's scowl deepened sharply at the words, his flaps giving an irritable twitch towards his hold.

Ignoring his companion's expression, the forklift picked up a menu from the table and glowered at it with an entirely unnecessary amount of suspicion. "It's not like Cad left enough of our budget for me to pick up more than half of what we need, anyway," he added, half in an undertone.

"Don't mention him, you'll ruin our appetites," the plane grumbled, his flaps giving another irritable twitch, before his deep frown softened. "Is the baechu kimchi on the menu yet?"

The forklift gave a disgusted snort, but angled the menu so that the plane could read the listed entrees. "If you're getting kimchi, switch sides with me. I'm not parking downwind of that."

"Says the guy who spent most of yesterday huffing turpentine."

"That was two hours, max. And I'd rather smell turpentine than salt-pickled cabbage. Or the _results_ of you eating salt-pickled cabbage. We'll have to leave the hanger doors open tonight."

"You don't get to make fun of kimchi when your culture invented natto," the plane shot back, not looking at all bothered by the slight on his systems.

The forklift snorted. "Just because my culture _invented_ it doesn't mean I actually _eat_ it. And you're the one that eats oysters, so don't start with me on disgusting slimy things."

"I _like_ oysters."

"Not for the side benefits, I assume."

The look that the C-119 shot at his companion at that was enough to make _me_ want to back away from three tables over - if the plane decided to take off his companion's roof for the comment, I wanted to be nowhere in proximity.

"Maru, would you like to make your own way back to the park?" the plane asked, his tone one of deadly, frigid calm, and the forklift backed away a few feet, both tines raised in a gesture of surrender.

"Sorry, Cabbie. Just sayin', if you like sucking on dirty water filters, I can give you one out of the line back at the base for free."

"Whoever last told you that you were funny was lying," the plane grumbled, shuffling his flaps, but he settled quickly enough when he spotted the approaching waitress.

Cho-Hee was a tiny little forklift, not even as tall as the plane's front landing gear, and generally quite timid around large aircraft. But on any given Tuesday morning, she was the only one waiting tables. I could see the slight tremor in her tines as she approached the table; apparently, so could Cabbie, who softened his expression immediately and offered her a gentle smile.

" _Joh-eun achim,_ " he greeted her, the syllables flowing easily, if slowly, off his tongue, and Cho-Hee's disbelieving blink vanished into a brilliant smile, while Maru's jaw nearly hit the concrete.

Amazing, the difference a simple 'good morning' could make.

 _"Joh-eun achim! Jal jinaess-eoyo?"_ Cho-Hee asked, her beaming smile bright enough to drag one to my own mouth.

 _"Gwaenchanh-a,"_ Cabbie answered, his expression wry, before nodding towards the menu and querying Cho-Hee on... something.

My skill at Korean is limited to 'good morning', 'good night' and 'where is your bathroom?', so I didn't follow most of it, other than the names of a few dishes - the aforementioned baechu kimchi included - but Cho-Hee rolled off to the kitchen with a broad grin on her face a few minutes later.

Given the plane's age and the USAF insignias, it wasn't too difficult to guess when and where the plane had picked the language up - although his talent with it obviously came as a surprise to his friend. Maru hadn't gotten a word in edgewise throughout the entire conversation, and was still staring up at his companion, his expression utterly gobsmacked.

"What exactly did you order me?" Maru asked a moment later, when he'd managed to unearth his voice from somewhere under his clear astonishment.

"Nothing that's going to offend your delicate sensibilities," Cabbie answered, the sarcasm in his voice heavy, but his tone less aggravated than it had been a few minutes ago. After a moment's pause, he added, "Speaking of foreign food, what was it that Lizzie was telling you about the kitchen requisitions last week that had you laughing so hard?"

Maru only half-stifled his snort of laughter. "Oh, that. Apparently Cad decided he absolutely _must_ have two hundred and fifty pounds of fresh satsuma shipped in by next week."

"He must have wanted an intellectual equal."

I choked on both a laugh and my noodles, which drew both their gazes to me for an uncomfortable moment - Cabbie's gaze was penetrating, and Maru's sarcastic smirk suggested that he was quite aware I'd been inadvertently eavesdropping on their conversation.

After a few seconds of uncomfortable scrutiny, though, they turned back to their conversation, and I don't think it was my imagination that they were speaking slightly louder than before.

"I think he'd be awfully challenged to keep up with a couple hundred pounds of half-rotten citrus," Maru snickered. "I take it you heard that Windlifter lured him under one of Dipper's training drops again?"

Cabbie shook his head slightly, his expression one of disbelieving resignation. "Isn't that three times now?"

"Four! Blade got the first honor, Dipper's gotten him twice, and Winds somehow lured him out _and_ dropped on him last month. Still haven't figured out how."

"I imagine Lizzie helped."

"Probably. Think she can find me a hang glider to borrow for an afternoon? I'm getting tempted to strap in and try it myself. I'm sure Windlifter has more of those water balloons..."

The visual was fairly ridiculous, and Cabbie apparently thought so as well, if his expression was anything to go by. "You water-bombing Cad from a hang-glider? I'd pay to see that," he snorted, a sharp enough exhale of laughter to stir the napkins on the table.

"With what money?" Maru countered, his tone more subdued as he scrambled to gather the escaping napkins. One of them caught a breath of wind and flopped towards my table; I caught it and waved Maru off when he glanced after it.

"The same money I used to pay for my air filters, obviously," Cabbie answered, not bothering to lower his voice.

"I'm not taking your pension money to dump water balloons on Cad when I can do it for free," Maru grumbled, piling the napkins back on the table and thumping the saltshaker on top of them to prevent them blowing away again. "You shouldn't have to pay for the filters as it is."

The big plane shuffled his flaps in an unconcerned shrug. "Not like I've got much better to do with it."

"Other than buy lunch," Maru added, as Cho Hee came rolling back out, balancing Maru's bowl on one tine and pushing the adjustable lift that held Cabbie's portion with the other. "What was it you got me again?"

"Japchae."

"...in English, what was it you got me again?"

"Stir-fried sweet potato noodles and vegetables with soy sauce. Stop whining, you'll like it."

"As long as it smells better than salt-pickled cabbage," Maru grumbled, but he smiled as he got his first whiff of the japchae. "How do I say 'thank you' in Korean?"

" _Gomabseubnida,_ " Cabbie and Cho-Hee answered in unison, before exchanging a glance and simultaneously bursting into laughter. They exchanged a few more pleasantries before Cho-Hee came to collect my bowl and leave my check; a few whispered words from me had her slipping another check across my table, which I signed off as well.

After all, a couple of lunches was a small price to pay for a smile.

* * *

~ END CHAPTER~

* * *

*END NOTES: Maru, in my headcanon, is of Japanese decent - hence Cabbie's comment regarding 'his culture' inventing natto - as 'maru' is a suffix occasionally added to Japanese male names (and regularly added to the names of Japanese naval ships).

No disrespect is intended towards any of the foods or cultures mentioned. Anything pickled and/or fermented tends to be an easy target simply because of their pungent scent and strong flavor often leads to them being an acquired taste.

The 'side benefits' of oysters Maru is referring to is their reputation as an aphrodisiac. As this is set a year or two prior to the events of Planes F&R, Wally isn't visible to anyone other than Cabbie and Windlifter, and Maru therefore isn't entirely aware how sensitive of a spot he's poking.

Cabbie and Cho-Hee's conversation is brought to you courtesy of Google Translate, as Cabbie speaks eight languages, while the author can manage one language about eight days out of ten. Their dialogue was as follows:

Cabbie: 'Good morning.'

Cho-Hee: 'Good morning! How are you?'

Cabbie: 'Okay.'

(Author is not particularly creative about polite conversation, either.)


	6. In A Small Place

A sequence that will become part of Cabbie's Uncomfortably Emotional Subplot in my gradually-upcoming Epic Cars Fanfiction (Explicitly Not 'OF DOOM'), which Wally demanded be posted here in the interim. Warnings for oblique references to internalized homophobia.

* * *

 **IN A SMALL PLACE**

"Knight to E3."

Cabbie surveyed the board in front of him with a critical eye before glancing back to Wally, no more than a pale suggestion of a face in the bright mid-afternoon sunlight pouring into his hanger, then back down at the chessboard between them.

"Are you sure about that move?"

"Hey, when you can beat Windlifter and Blade both, three games outta four, _then_ ya get to question my technique," Wally shot back, and Cabbie heaved a sigh and moved the knight as requested. Beating Blade wasn't really a problem; they were evenly matched when the Fire Chief could bring all of his formidable attention to bear on the game - something that became far more difficult for him when Nick inevitably decided to entertain himself in close proximity to their matches.

Windlifter, though, could probably trounce Cabbie on the chessboard with both eyes shut.

"I'm still not sure we're looking at the same board," Cabbie grumbled, eyeing the game speculatively. Wally was a... unique strategist, to say the least, and difficult to anticipate.

Their Colonel had called him six kinds of crazy, which probably wasn't too far off the mark.

Even with his gaze on the board and his mind wandering, Cabbie could feel when Wally's attention shifted and refocused elsewhere - the faint tingle in his plating told him, even if decades of familiarity with his partner didn't.

What had captured Wally's attention became evident a second later, when Maru's familiar, sardonic drawl rose from the doorway. "Your kids are causing trouble."

Cabbie neither lifted his gaze from the board nor bothered arguing the terminology, knowing full well that Maru teased him all the more mercilessly if he objected. "And this is surprising, how?"

"Avalanche isn't."

 _That_ caught Cabbie's attention, and his gaze snapped up to meet Maru's. "Avalanche? What's the matter?"

"Dunno," Maru answered, spreading his tines in a broad shrug. "Haven't heard a peep out of him since the mail came this morning."

Cabbie frowned, dropping his mouthstick on the board and shifting out from around the table. The mail had come in almost five hours ago, an unheard-of length of time for Avalanche to be silent without catastrophic injury involved. A night of concussion watch had taught Cabbie the kid couldn't even _sleep_ quietly.

"And you're just mentioning this _now_?" he demanded, feeling all his flaps twitch in agitation. A shifting brush of aching cold - Wally - slid along his port wing and over his back to settle against his starboard engine, the biting chill soothing in its reassuring familiarity, and Cabbie forced himself to stillness, drawing in a deep breath.

The kid was fine - _had_ to be fine, someone would have noticed something sooner otherwise. Dynamite and the other Smokejumpers would never have left him alone if bad news had come from home. And on the off chance he'd fallen ill, Dynamite or one of the ghosts would have told them, or Windlifter would have divined a negative energy shift from the direction the pine needles were pointing, or Avalanche would, possibly, have had the sense to roll the few hundred feet from the Jumpers' hanger to Maru's workshop and tell them something was wrong.

Or just tell them without leaving the hanger. It was Avalanche, after all.

None of which stopped Cabbie from rolling out of his hanger and heading for the Smokejumpers', the sharp chill of Wally's presence right beside him.

"I checked on him at ten and again an hour ago," Maru countered, turning and rolling alongside Cabbie nonetheless. "He's fine, he got a book in the mail and wanted to read it rather than go do... whatever it is the others are doing."

On cue, a distant shriek - Drip - echoed out from the woods behind the Base, followed by howls of laughter from Dynamite and Pinecone and a great deal of yelling from Blackout.

"...I don't even want to know," Cabbie sighed, checking his rapid roll towards the Smokejumper's hanger for to a slightly more sedate pace, more reassured than he should have been by Maru's explanation.

While none of the Jumpers were exactly what you'd call intellectual types, it wasn't unusual to find any or all of them relaxing with a book at the end of a long week. Admittedly, with Drip it would be a _comic_ book, but still. Finding one of them - particularly Pinecone or Avalanche, both of whom tested the practical limits of their lockers by storing their personal libraries in them - reading rather than wreaking havoc wasn't cause for alarm.

Even if it was in the middle of a truly beautiful afternoon following three weeks of keeping a seemingly endless series of small spotfires contained, a task that was more aggravating than actually taxing, and the other four Jumpers seemed intent on goofing off as loudly and enthusiastically as possible.

Sighing to himself, Cabbie rolled the last hundred feet a little faster.

As Maru had told him, though, the kid was hunkered down in a patch of sunlight with a book, a big, navy-blue hardcover, sans dust jacket, and absorbed enough by it that he didn't notice their arrival until Cabbie inadvertently blocked his sunbeam.

Avalanche glanced up at the sudden shade, his familiar, painfully-wide grin flashing over his face as he spotted his honorary uncles and Maru. "HI GUYS!"

Cabbie merely chuffed in response, but Wally sharpened his outline enough for his returning grin to be visible. "Heya, kid. Y'scared us for a bit when Maru said ya weren't out with the others."

"I'M GOOD. I WANTED TO READ -" Avalanche started to gesture back to his book, but then abruptly snapped his mouth shut, an expression of wide-eyed alarm passing across his features.

Rather against his will, Cabbie felt both his curiosity and his eyebrows rise. "Embarrassing book?"

"NO!"

Which did not in the least explain why the kid was trying to hide it from Cabbie's view with his dozer blade.

Wally apparently had the same thought, and Cabbie watched in amusement as his partner zipped forward, nearly passing _through_ Avalanche's blade before the dozer rolled backwards, carefully drawing the book with him.

"Not embarrassin', huh?" Wally chuckled, retreating a few feet to grin mischievously down at the dozer rather than chase him across the hanger. "What is it, the pornographic frescoes of Pompeii? A history of prostitution in Ancient Rome?"

"GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER, UNCLE WALLY," Avalanche shot back over Cabbie's sigh and Maru's chortling, although he made no move whatsoever to share the actual contents of the book with them.

And try as he might, Cabbie couldn't help the mingled spark of affection, bewilderment, and fear that danced through him at hearing one of 'his' kids call Wally 'Uncle'. The entire team had accepted the unspoken truth of his relationship with Wally without so much as batting an eye, and seemed quite unlikely to change that opinion, despite Cabbie's concerns.

(Even having witnessed them cheering Blade and Nick's marriage, everyone's unblinking acceptance of such relationships still astounded him on a daily basis.)

"You're the one with the embarrassing book, kiddo."

"IT'S NOT EMBARRASSING," Avalanche protested, although he did sound distinctly sheepish - a feat Cabbie wouldn't have imagined possible at eighty decibels - and he made no move to reveal the book. "AT LEAST NOT THAT WAY. IT'S KINDA AWKWARD, THOUGH."

"What, you order the helicopter Kama Sutra instead of the grounder version?"

"...THEY _MAKE_ THAT?"

"What do you think I'm getting Nick and Blade for an anniversary gift?" Maru snorted.

Cabbie rolled his eyes ceilingward and sighed. In the first place, Nick and Blade most definitely did not need more ideas on how to be publicly indecent, and in the second, this conversation was going in circles. Staggering, lopsided, filthy-minded circles.

On the other hand, Avalanche's theatrical horror at Maru's suggestion did mean that he lifted his blade away from the book, allowing Cabbie his first good glance at the kid's reading material.

The grainy, black-and-white photo on the page made him suck in a breath, sharp with shock and recognition.

Avalanche, his eyes widening, made an abortive move to cover the book once more, only to freeze when Cabbie shot a quelling glance in his direction.

" _Hell In A Very Small Place,_ huh?" Wally murmured, staring down at the image as well. The caption beneath the photograph, of four planes conferring around a map posted on a roughly constructed wall, read simply _'American and French air troops discuss their plan of attack,'_ with no names given.

Not that Cabbie needed them. Not when one of the faces in that grainy photo was his own, and the other three were those who had died in the sky beside him.

It was strange, looking back at himself, captured decades ago by one fateful snap of a shutter. There hadn't been many photos of him taken in those days, and he'd kept even fewer. Somehow, he'd always thought that photos of himself from before the Siege would have captured someone young, stupid, and terrified.

Oddly, his photographic self bore the same look of exhausted determination that fire seasons showed him in every reflective surface.

"Where did you even get this?" he asked, finally, tearing his gaze away from the page. (He and Wally were so close in the picture, Wally's wingtip pressing against his starboard engine, as close as they'd always been, and how had nobody ever noticed?) "I didn't think there were many copies left."

"THERE AREN'T. MISS ELIZABETH GOT IT FOR ME."

Frowning, Cabbie set his jaw and tried not to think uncharitable thoughts of the Jaguar in question. As much as he liked Liz, she could be entirely too free with things he would have preferred to keep under his plating.

"DON'T MAKE THAT FACE, I ASKED HER TO."

"You sent Liz chasing down a book on a war that was over decades before you were born? Why?"

Avalanche shrugged, resting the edge of his blade carefully, almost protectively, against the book in question, as though he was afraid Cabbie would try to take it from him. "BECAUSE I'M CURIOUS ABOUT STUFF THAT YOU WENT THROUGH, BUT I DON'T WANNA MAKE YOU RELIVE BAD MEMORIES. I FIGURED THE BOOK COULD TELL ME SOME OF YOUR STORIES, SO THAT YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO."

Which was... so ridiculously, stupidly sweet of the brat that, for the briefest of seconds, Cabbie felt a suspicious sting behind his eyes. It went away with a few quick blinks, although the tilt of Wally's head, half-visible though it was, told him it hadn't gone completely unnoticed.

"Tell you what, kid," Cabbie sighed, ignoring the slight rasp in his throat, "just... come over when you don't feel like tearing around in the mud, and I'll tell you the stories I can manage. Deal?"

Avalanche's grin could have lit half the valley. "DEAL!"

* * *

~ END CHAPTER ~

* * *

The book mentioned and (inspiration for the chapter title), _Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu_ , is real, published in 1966 by Bernard Fall, a war correspondent and historian who embedded with French troops in Vietnam during the First Indochina War.

The photograph described, as you can guess, is me taking liberties. Aside from the obvious reasons, American participation in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu was kept under wraps until 2004.

The Pompeian frescoes Wally mentions are also real - beautifully intricate, exceptionally well-preserved, and incredibly filthy pieces of pornographic artwork.

Much in the same vein, the Kama Sutra, or Kamasutra, is an ancient Hindu text that is still considered one of the more comprehensive practical guides to human sexual behavior.


	7. Navigation

One of the sub-plots that will be included in The Epic Cars Fanfiction (Explicitly Not 'OF DOOM') will be Cabbie's Uncomfortably Emotional Subplot, in which he gradually comes to terms with some of his multitudinous emotional issues.

This is Cabbie's perspective on Chapters 7/8 of All Hallowed, after he and Nick verbally battle it out over Cabbie's treatment of Wally in front of the rest of the team.

 **TRIGGER WARNINGS: Self-hatred, internalized homophobia, intense survivor's guilt, unhealthy emotional coping mechanisms, mention of considered suicide.**

* * *

 **NAVIGATION**

He would have felt less exposed with all his skin stripped off, every strut and scar exposed to their eyes.

Bad enough that it had happened at all. Over half a century he'd been keeping the anger and undeserved self-pity stuffed in a hole where it belonged - and he'd never fooled himself into thinking that it would stay there forever, but damn Nick to the Pits, why had he brought it up then? Why, at the one time his nerves were so damn raw just from the helicopter's _presence_ that he couldn't keep his mouth shut and all his pain under wraps where it belonged?

Why in front of the eyes and ears of the entire team?

He couldn't shake the memory of their expressions, all horror and pity and fear and contempt as he'd turned tail and fled. He'd seen every damn one of them, from the fright on Dipper's face to the tears in Drip's eyes to the open scorn in Nick's, and couldn't decide which he hated more.

Or which he deserved more. Not the tears; all he'd done was get Wally killed. But Nick's anger and Dipper's fear - those he deserved. In some twisted, perverse way, he almost welcomed them, because they were at least honestly earned; not like the grief and pity he'd seen in the kid's faces. He had no right to that.

The familiar chill swept back over his starboard engine again, Wally's anchoring presence settling into place, and Cabbie breathed, a deep, shaking gasp of air that shook more than he would ever admit.

Shook more than it had in decades, he thought, with the memory of Wally's words from moments before still circling his mind in an endless loop.

 _"If you'd been the one to go down, I'd've gone down after you."_

" _Why_?" Cabbie asked, finally, the rasp in his voice hollowing the word from a demand into a prayer. "Why would you have done it? I was never worth that."

"You are to me," came Wally's answer, immediate and unhesitating, and Cabbie shook his head, disbelief and denial biting into him.

"Why? I rejected you for years and ignored you for six decades, so what in the Pits am I worth?"

Wally chuckled, the soft light he cast flickering an impossible shadow off the wall by Cabbie's nose. "There's rules to this ghost stuff, ya know. I couldn't be with you if you didn't want me."

Cabbie flinched. Nick's words - _'At least mine isn't one-sided.'_ \- had struck a mark in him, one that hurt more than it had a right to, considering he'd spent decades trying to make it precisely that. "I don't want -"

"To condemn me to an afterlife deprived of peace and Paradise, I _know_ ," Wally sighed, "but when are you going to learn that -"

The sharp blare of the siren cut off his words, and Cabbie half-turned towards his door - his duty mattered more than either his pain or his embarrassment - but Wally's numbing cold vanished from his wing before he could finish the movement.

It wasn't unusual for Wally to do scouting runs for him and Windlifter - both on the Base and on the scene - and usually he had no trouble waiting patiently for Wally's return. Today, though, it was all but impossible to sit and wait, with the rattling tension still humming through his lines.

"It's pretty minor, by all accounts," Wally offered as he returned, his comforting chill wrapping around Cabbie's engine. "Blade and Winds doesn't think they'll need the Jumpers at all, so we're off the hook."

The words were both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because Cabbie certainly didn't need to be in the air right now, but neither did he need to be left with alone Wally and his thoughts. He could feel the emotions that Nick had torn up boiling under his skin, and knew full well that he only had a few minutes before he lost control of them.

"You should go," he managed, after a long moment of fighting the words out through a throat that felt too small. He could feel Wally's attention sharpen on him, a warm prickle of concern inside the cold, and drew in another breath, trying to force the words out better. "Help Windlifter keep a lookout. Blade is going to be distracted."

Probably both unkind and untrue; Blade was one of the better commanders they'd served under, and his devotion to his duty was unquestionable. But these were pretty unique circumstances.

The comforting cold of Wally's presence shifted, moving from Cabbie's wing along his side until Wally coalesced in front of him, a pale, gleaming face that stared at him with undisguised concern.

Cabbie stared back. He knew he couldn't hide anything from Wally, and didn't bother to try. After all these years, Wally knew him, undoubtedly far better than Cabbie knew himself. He saw the realization cross Wally's face, the soft wave of pain that rose behind his eyes, and had to close his own against the surge of guilt that lashed at him.

The brush of arctic cold against his lips startled his eyes open again, in time to see Wally drawing back from the kiss. "All right," Wally said softly. "Take the time ya need. But you call Windlifter the second you need me back, ya hear?"

"I hear," Cabbie answered, the words rasping out through a throat too tight for breath, his eyes slipping shut again. There was another brush of ice across his mouth before he felt Wally's presence vanish.

With his anchor gone, Cabbie stopped fighting and let himself fall beneath the storm.

* * *

By the time Blade knocked on his door, Wally trailing the helicopter in, he'd almost managed to fight his emotions back down where they belonged, stuffed under decades of pretending they didn't exist.

And then talking to Blade brought them all back up again, and worse.

He'd never actually had to spit out those words, never had to confess not only what he'd done but what he _was_ , and he found that even trying - even with Blade, who he'd trusted with his life for years now, who would understand, because he was like that too - he couldn't make his mouth form the word.

 _'You still deserve to be happy.'_

The words hung in the air for hours after Blade had closed the door behind him, silent echoes bouncing off the picture beneath the dust-coated glass and the icy chill spread across his back, unshaken by both the anger and the grief.

Wally's presence was as near a constant as he had in his life, a fixed point in uncertain skies. As steady and unchanging as the North Star, even if Cabbie followed his guidance... less than he probably should.

"You really would have risked it, wouldn't you? Us?"

Sixty years ago, six minutes ago. Wally's dedication to him had never shaken, even when Cabbie's own doubt and fear had left him rattled to his core.

"Still will if ya give me a chance," Wally answered, without a second of hesitation.

"I'm not sure how much of a chance either of us has," Cabbie sighed. "But I guess we should take what we're given."

Wally's shimmer brightened until his joy was truly enough to light the room.

* * *

~ END CHAPTER ~

* * *

Notes: Blade is actually _demisexual_ (someone who requires a strong emotional attachment in order to feel sexual attraction) verging on _asexual_ (someone who has no sexual attraction to other people, a trait which Maru and your author share) technically termed a _grey-a_ , rather than homosexual, but explaining the sexuality spectrum to Cabbie is a task for another day and another story.

If you want to learn more about demisexuality or asexuality, AVEN, the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, is a great resource! (Just Google it, or check out this chapter on AO3 for a link!)


End file.
